"A Committee of Correspondence"

06 November 2016

“The times they are a’changing” - TTG

“WASHINGTON — Ten women who were commissioned Army officers in the spring graduated from the initial infantry training course Wednesday, becoming the Army’s first female infantry lieutenants. The women were among 166 soldiers to complete the Infantry Officer Basic Leadership Course at Fort Benning in Georgia, a 17-week class that provides new officers the basic skills to lead a rifle platoon into combat, said Army Lt. Col. Matthew W. Weber, the commander of the unit that oversees the course. Officers are commissioned through ROTC, Officer Candidate School or the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.”

“The infantry officer course is a “critical step” toward leading a rifle platoon, but the soldiers who graduated the Army’s first gender-integrated infantry class Wednesday will not join a combat unit for nearly a year, Weber said. They will attend additional courses to prepare them to serve in the traditionally all-male infantry. Those classes include the famously grueling Ranger School, Airborne School, Stryker Leaders Course and Mechanized Leaders Course, Weber said. Eventually they’ll become platoon leaders at Fort Hood in Texas or Fort Bragg in North Carolina.”

“This, the training of an infantry lieutenant, is a process until they step into a rifle platoon,” Weber said. “This is but the very first step in the process.” Stars and Stripes

———————

I just don’t see how this is going to work… other than as an equal opportunity sideshow act. Even a superbly qualified female infantry platoon leader will still be an object of rare curiosity. I’m all for equal opportunity in employment, but being an infantry leader at the platoon level is not a job. It’s a sacred and deadly profession, a calling, a vocation. I could see qualified female officers and soldiers on an infantry battalion staff or in the headquarters company, but I’d rather not. I guess I’m just not a “modern man.”

The military education system has changed since my day. Many in my Infantry Officer Basic Course (IOBC) went straight from graduation to their first infantry platoon. During the last three weeks of my IOBC, we were tracked into light infantry or mech infantry training. In the light track, we did a week of patrolling (Ranger Week), advanced demolitions, defending from and attacking armor, MOBA (military operations in built-up areas) and airmobile operations. The mech guys took their coolers and duffle bags to the field and rode around in M-113s. They said us light guys were anachronisms and would be extinct in a year or so.

According to the article, no infantry officer goes straight to their first platoon after the Infantry Officer Basic Leadership Course. Do they have to go through the Ranger Course? If so, that would be a major change. I’d appreciate an update on infantry officer training in today’s Army.

During the last week in my IOBC we were told there were a lot of openings in the upcoming Ranger Course and we were welcome to try out for it. I figured there’d be no snakes or gators to contend with as a Winter Ranger, so I and many of my buddies said, “Why not?” We were given the PT and swim test the next day and processed into the Ranger training company the afternoon of our graduation from IOBC. I remember us making a game out of giving the Ranger sergeants a ration of crap about us being big time officers now and the sergeants telling us that they’ll remember us come Monday morning. We all got a kick out of it and those sergeants clearly did remember us come Monday morning.

While looking for an online version of this article, I found another taste of the modern Army.

———————

“WASHINGTON — Two female Army officers have been approved for initial Special Forces training, the first step in the long process to earn the coveted Green Beret, an Army spokeswoman said Monday.

The women are the first female soldiers to be accepted into the Special Forces Assessment and Selection and could report to the three-week program at Fort Bragg, North Carolina as early as October, said Maj. Melody Faulkenberry, a spokeswoman for the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center.” Stars and Stripes

———————

I don’t blame them for trying. To aspire to “earn the coveted Green Beret” is a worthy endeavor. But again, I just can’t see how a female ODA commander would work. I certainly don’t see it as an enhancement of Special Forces capabilities.

I do remember when I saw, actually heard, the first female member in 10th SFG(A). We were standing on the tarmac going through the manifest call for a night jump at Fort Devens. As our last names were called, we’d respond with a resounding “Here.” All of a sudden, we heard a high pitched “Here” and we all turned around. It was our first female rigger. I heard someone mutter, “When the hell did that happen?”

It appears the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (A&S) is now a prerequisite for attending the actual SFOQC. That didn’t exist when I went through. We applied, took a physical and, if accepted, showed up at the JFKSWC to take the PT and swim test on day one. I was surprised that half our class was weeded out by that test. From what I’ve seen, that A&S is extremely physical, much more so that the PT and swim test. There’s a very good chance that these aspiring female Green Berets will not make through A&S. That’s what’s happening at the Basic School at Quantico.

I'm glad you brought up the problem of overloading infantry. It's a serious problem. I'm from the generation where a buttpack on your web gear sufficed for carrying your stuff. Ammo and weapon comprised the majority of the load and strict fire discipline helped to ease the ammo requirement. Body armor seems to a minimal requirement today. The only armor we carried was the steel pots on our heads. The loads I've seen carried by our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are ridiculous. Contrast that with the loads carried by the YPG/YPJ units.

I was an O-2 but I had been a rifle platoon leader for two years. I was definitely the junior guy among the officers in my training detachment. As you say we had foreign officers in the course, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Iranian. Those are the ones I remember. There were two USMC as well. pl

On our team alone we had a big, bold, burly Spaniard who always carried a field expresso maker, two Malaysian scout-trackers and a Tunisian who badly wanted us to take out Gaddafi because his shenanigans ruined his Summer every year. The other three teams had their own foreign officers, but I don't remember where they came from.

"combat is a nasty exercise, but history shows it becomes more and more mechanized over time", really ? Guess it is true, except when it isn't.
Ask the Izzies about their experience with the "plasma warrior" syndrom, or the French with their "playstation generation".
Certain environments will NEVER be mechanized, period. There's plenty of evidence to back this up, but nuf' said already.

Just a little crash course in "modern warfare": considering the % of the world's population living in cities (which is higher than ever before and still climbing), considering the difficulties inherent to urban combat for a technologically superior force, considering the increasingly asymetrical nature and hybrid nature of warfare in a number of areas in the world, considering the average distance between opposing fighters in urban environments, etc., considering all of the above, you really believe "facing the enemy close up" is going to disapear anytime soon ?
As for knowing the places, how would you be able to assess how much they know ? You also fluent in pashto ? farsi ? arabic ? tamazigh ? somali or oromo ?

"they (female COs) have to motivate their troops and having a deep wellspring of personal drive makes that job much easier". You sure we're talking abt combat arms here or is this statement a copy/paste from the corporate world ? Honestly, I have trouble understanding it, if we are indeed talking abt combat arms in a professional military.

I don't even recognize the Army anymore since I left it. More fever dreams about "equality" and enablers like Lars always chiming in with "war won't be so personal anymore" (shots fired at them: 0).

How many men are going to have to die cause GI Barbie wanted to play infantry and can't drag a troop weighing 250+ in full battle rattle out of fire? But hey, I'm sure we will certainly see less fraternization.

Aside: Every unit has to relearn soldier's load when it deploys. I remember when we arrived in Afghanistan in 03, the 10th Mountain who were showing us around went on patrol with ammo, water, batteries and kept it light. Meanwhile we wanted to have packing lists with three different bags until our first big op when you had something like 20 casualties across a company from guys hiking up icy goat trails at night with an 80lb ruck and falling off the mountain.

In addition to that, Israeli society has profoundly changed in such a way that they no longer possess the kind of men who fought in '67. What their infantry is good at now is abusing Palestinians at roadblocks. This is now the era of the Gucci Israelis rather than the kibbutznik generation.

General Barrow knew what he was talking about. I was lucky enough to serve during the time General Barrow was CMC. He was one of our best IMHO. He was a Mustang and before being sent to OCS he did time as a drill instructor at MCRD San Diego. His obituary is:

Interesting about the letter that General Barrow wrote to Caspar Weinberger regarding American troops in Lebanon being shot at by IDF troops. That got ignored and disappeared down a rathole unfortunately.

I always wondered whether the architect of the Pentagon had gone to LSU and seen Pentagon Barracks there? Barrow had worked there as janitor and waiter to earn his tuition and board & keep.

I agree, in afgha, body armor was 22 kg, add ammo ( 12 magazines for rifle + 6 for pistol ) and all the stuff, nearly...450 kg.
Taliban where chamois in mountains, we where turtle.

Women as platoon leader are not so bad, but we experienced problems in our Army. Most of the time they want to be better than men and put too much pressure on theirs soldiers and NCO;
I remenber an entire platoon in Bosnia soldiers and NCO, going to ask the compagnie commander to be transferred to another squad or company.
There is no women in SF, partly because the risk for them if being captured.

We're gonna have to draft Barbie and Ken and the rest of the rainbow flag generation as they aren't signing up. The one's pushing the policy are, to use rjj's phrase, the "rainbow guard of our own cultural revolution".